Dinosaur Deck Hub Addition?
TappedOut forum
Posted on July 12, 2019, 3:10 a.m. by Adleisio
I noticed there is a sever lack of dinosaur specific hubs for those building mostly dino decks after the Ixalan blocks.
I think Dinosaurs are reaching a critical mass where they probably do deserve their own hub, much as Minotaurs and other limited-support tribes already have. Based on our seeing a couple dinosaurs printed since Ixalan, I think Wizards likes the design space dinosaurs occupy, as they provide for large reptilian creatures without the baggage of Dragons. I figure we will continue to see Dinosaurs pop up with some frequency, only furthering the need for a specific hub.
July 12, 2019 8:33 a.m.
Added Dinosaurs as a hub, but I hope they slow down on tribal pushes. If every new tribe gets supported enough to be hubbed, it's going to pile up really fast.
Except Skeletons. Skeletons are cooler than Zombies, and there's only 50 of them. Zombies get that many new cards each year. Where's the Skeleton tribal?
July 12, 2019 11:07 a.m.
Femme_Fatale says... #6
I'm of the opinion that specific tribes needs a critical mass of lords and/or competitively viable in a nonstandard format to get its own hub. There is simply too many of them to list them all.
In fact, we could do to remove some of these hubs that are archetypes that are no longer played. Aikido, Battlecruiser, Caw Blade, Forcefeed, Necropotence, Solar Flare, Spellslinger and Team America.
I don't agree with the dinos inclusion, in fact, all the following tribal hubs can be removed: Angels, Demons, Dragons, Knights, Saproling, Soldiers and Wizards.
Amulet Bloom should be renamed to Amulet Titan since Summer Bloom is banned. Izzet Phoenix should be changed to just Phoenix since Arclight Phoenix deck isn't restricted to just izzet colours.
The only archetype that I think needs inclusion is Eggs, an archetype that has existed through many formats for a long time.
July 13, 2019 3:04 p.m.
Femme_Fatale I disagree with some of your hubs to be removed. Aikido, Battlecruiser, and Spellslinger, in particular from the ones you listed, are very common casual archetypes.
I do agree that the hub list can be trimmed up, with some of the old Standard options removed. I also agree that Eggs needs to be on the list, and I'll add that one shortly.
July 13, 2019 7 p.m.
Eggs has been added.
Femme_Fatale Sorry to keep tagging you, but just to clarify, what would you consider a "critical mass" of lords? Cards such as Kinjalli's Caller and Forerunner of the Empire aren't traditional lords, but they define deck construction as much as Elvish Archdruid or Lord of the Undead . Same with cards like Dinosaur Stampede and Savage Stomp . The tribe is small, but it's popular in casual, and as cdkime mentions, there's likely only going to be more of them.
July 13, 2019 7:50 p.m.
Femme_Fatale says... #9
Battlecruiser is just control/ramp, it's not unique enough to warrant its own archetype. Aikido and spellslinger I feel aren't descriptive enough of what they are. Spellslinger is just "permanentless" and can be renamed as such. Aikido isn't useful in an english speaking site. If hubs aren't a presently top-tier deck or using a keyword/specific card, I feel like they need to be much more easily understood by people who see it in the hubs list and go "oh! that's neat" and not "what the hell is this?" As such I suggest the terminology "Tactical Appropriation" as a replacement for Aikido.
At least, I hope you can rename hubs without issues.
Other hubs I think can be removed: Large ... what even is this?, Vehicle, probably Hive Mind as the archetype is now just Amulet Titan, Devotion and Energy since those aren't going to be comp decks in non-rotating formats until more devotion gets reprinted. Exalted since that has kinda died down quite a bit and is usually just voltron now. Cruel control since Cruel Ultimatum is kind of an underwhelming card now. Loam and Lands seem kinda interchangeable.
Artifact and Enchantment should be plural.
As for the requirements for a tribe to get a hub for tribes that don't have a competitive showing, I think there needs to be 10 cards of permanents that give static/permanent benefits specifically about that tribe that aren't one time effects, and instants or sorceries that care specifically about that tribe as their main effect (an example, for dragons, Belltoll Dragon wouldn't classify but Dragonstorm would). This means the following tribes don't make the cut: Angels, Cats, Demons, Knights and Minotaurs.
These should be added as a consequence of the above criteria: Elementals, Warriors, and maybe "flying matters" and "toughness matters" but that's up for debate, and probably isn't entirely a good idea if exalted should also go.
July 16, 2019 4:09 a.m.
Femme_Fatale says... #10
legendofa: just wondering if you read all the above comment.
July 20, 2019 11:55 p.m.
I didn't get the notification for your earlier comment, so I'm reading through it now.
Points I agree with:
Renaming hubs is no issue at all, and Artifact and Enchantment can be made plural easily. I've gotten a couple of requests to change Amulet Bloom to Amulet Titan. Right now, it's a compromise by acknowledging the name origin in the description, but I see a lot of decks on this site named for Amulet Titan, so it's probably time to change that over.
Devotion and Energy are pretty Satndard-specific mechanics. You also mention Cruel Control and Exalted, and I believe you mentioned Caw Blade and Solar Flare in another thread as Standard decks that are past their time.
Points I'm not sold on:
I think Battlecruiser is a sufficiently unique subset of ramp/control, similar to Zoo being a unique subset of aggro/creatures, or Eggs being a unique subset of artifact/combo.
I had Spellslinger described more or less as "permanentless" for a while, then got several people telling me that the support permanents are just as important--think Thing in the Ice Flip or Keranos, God of Storms or Pyromancer Ascension . Turns out Spellslinger decks are majority, but definitely not exclusively, instants and sorceries.
Aikido can be renamed, but I've seen it clearly identified as that on other sites, and "Tactical Appropriation", while accurate and descriptive, is kind of a mouthful.
Loam and Lands have a lot of overlap, but I think Loam sits somewhere between Lands and Dredge. I want to look around, do some research, and see if there's any Lands decks that don't automatically include Life from the Loam . Would the Legacy Dark Depths deck go under the Lands hub?
Large... Not sure where this is going. Is there a hub called Large that I don't see?
Vehicle still has a novelty factor, but I'm willing to be convinced to take this off as too Standard-y, especially if nothing new shows up in the next set. This is more "wait and see" than "I'm not changing." If Vehicles continue to be printed, I'm going to keep it.
The tribal stuff, I'm going to look around and see what's been hubbed for those as well. Cats in particular had a major pre-built deck for it, and Angels, Knights, and Demons are casual stars, and get new additions almost every set. I don't know if they're sustained across Standard rotations.
I'll start cleaning some of this up tomorrow. It might not be a bad idea to start a dedicated hub addition/removal thread.
July 21, 2019 8:44 p.m.
Femme_Fatale says... #12
Other hubs that are past their time: Team America and Necropotence.
Large appears to have disappeared, I saw it once but it's gone ... might have been a bug.
The next set is fairy tale themed, so I do not expect any vehicles. My main thing with vehicles being removed was because there's very little cards that care about vehicles, and a deck rarely wants to maximize on vehicles considering you'd need a creature density for that.
I do not think lands and depths should be under the same hub. Depths is either a combo deck with lots of land tutors or a GB midrange deck. Lands is much more about utilizing utility lands and recurring one-use lands repeatedly to gain value over your opponent while also blanking a lot of their interaction. Lands just has dark depths because that's a land combo that wins games. Think of it like this: Dark Depths is like, Tron for legacy. It's centered around lands, but isn't entirely about having 35 lands in your 60.
I forgot to check saprolings but the only cards that actually care about saprolings are three cards from Dominaria.
seshiro_of_the_orochi says... #2
Try "tribal". It labels every creature type based deck.
July 12, 2019 3:44 a.m.